Building hype for a new video game today is an exercise of quick-fire attention grabs. A staccato volley of previews, screenshots, trailers and feature reveals. Anything less than persistent media presence for a big game is considered unusual. But that's the situation BioShock Infinite --one of the biggest games of a generation-- found itself, going dark for an entire year. A delay and news of development staff jumping ship had people worried that all was not well with the good ship Irrational.

"No big deal," said the developer. "We just weren't ready." The idea that Irrational would only show off their baby when they had something new to show has a certain resonance. 2007's brilliant BioShock had an economy of storytelling that made every inch of their underwater city Rapture worth exploring. A richness and deftness of touch that left nothing to waste. "Only speak up when you have something worth saying" is a philosophy that perhaps more development and publishing houses should adhere to.

Presuming that's the whole truth, of course. Either way, mid-development wobble or not, this preview a few months prior to release feels something like a reassurance, allowing us to get hands-on with the opening hour of Infinite and allow us to predict that everything's going to be just fine.

BioShock, many of you will remember, is renowned for having one of the finest openings to a video game. Infinite wishes to protect that legacy by echoing and subverting BioShock's curtain-opener with no small amount of showmanship. While BioShock starts you in the clouds before crashing you into the sea and guiding you to Rapture, Infinite takes the opposite approach, starting you on rain-swept water before blasting you upwards to the floating city of Columbia. It's 1912 and you are Booker DeWitt, a former Pinkerton agent forced to track down a young girl named Elizabeth. As demonstrated by a series of grisly messages to DeWitt, failure or non-compliance is not on the table.

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So it's off to the clouds. Columbia is a quite extraordinary place, a blend of early 20th century Americana, steampunk fantasy and sheer science-fiction. Tower blocks are kept afloat by giant propellers and balloons, the concrete horizon bobbing against a glistening cerulean sky. Mechanical horses trot through the streets, while robot vending machines dish out magical potions.

BioShock's Rapture was a city in which the affluence had died, crumbling in decay and overrun by mutant drug-addicts. By contrast Columbia is strikingly alive; high-society at the peak of its powers. And on the surface, its people are happy and healthy. Couples strolling through its cobbled streets in the sun, children splashing around in the spray of a fire hydrant, a bustling carnival fairground and a parade float carrying a barbershop quartet belting out an acapella version of The Beach Boys "God Only Knows." (That this song was released 54 years later than Infinite's setting gets the gears turning, off-hand reference or important detail?)

But beneath the bright and bubbly veneer, a constant sense of menace and oppression is present. Upon DeWitt's arrival, he's shuttled through a candlelit cave, messages of religious dogma burning gold, talking of a last chance for redemption and telling tale of a "prophet leading us to a new Eden." That prophet is the Father Comstock, Columbia's founder and ruler. Great billboards hold him up as the saviour of mankind, with one of the parade floats even naming him as a latter-day Jesus. Propaganda designed to keep the proletariat in fear and in check.

Infinite's opening is a terrific piece of stage-setting, with each detail giving an insight into the city of Columbia. But it's not until DeWitt has found himself in a carnival raffle that the illusion of contentment is fully shattered. DeWitt manages to pick the winning number daubed on a baseball, and the raffle's croupier announces his prize as "the first throw." From behind a curtain on stage, an Irish man and his black wife are dragged out in shackles, the woman crying while her husband pleads the baying crowd to target him and not her. Now you have a choice, throw the ball at the couple to begin their torture and keep incognito or launch it at the croupier. As I have DeWitt draw his arm back to plant the baseball between the eyes of the gurning master of ceremonies, a policeman grabs DeWitt's arm and spots the letters AD scarred into his hand. The mark of the devil, apparently.

The raffle erupts in violence, DeWitt smashing the policeman into the stage and wrenching a mechanical arm from his foe before snapping the neck of another. The crowd has scattered in screams, and Columbia's law enforcement has descended in order to take DeWitt out.

BioShock's combat was always a fabulous concept marred by slightly ropy execution, and while Infinite still doesn't have the slickness of some of its contemporaries, there's a notable improvement. The template is largely the same as previous games, allowing DeWitt to dual-wield magical powers and more traditional weaponry. BioShock's plasmids are rebranded as "Vigors" here, but their function is wholly familiar. The first two vigors you are given access to are "possession" and Devil's Kiss, a type of fireball grenade. Possession can turn mechanical turrets into allies, and can later be upgraded to convert human enemies too. Fireball grenade kind of speaks for itself.

The mechanical arm that DeWitt stole from the policeman is a "skyhook", a contraption originally invented to aid workers to move freight around the floating city. It now serves as a type of grapple and a deadly melee weapon; getting your neck caught in the skyhook's sharp, twirling business end is not a nice way to go.

Combat, then, is a three-way juggling act, switching between guns, vigors and melee as the situation demands it. It's open and dynamic, if not as precise as you would like, allowing you a decent amount of space in its wide locales to outthink and outmanoeuvre your pursuers. You are ostensibly more powerful than your adversaries, but even these early stages pose a stern challenge. Vigors can only be used when your salt level is high enough (topped up with elixirs and food stuff scattered about town), while your opponents are aggressive crackshots.

As in BioShock, you don't lose progress upon death in Infinite, rather you are returned to a safe distance and any opponents left alive will receive a health boost. Instead of the Vita chambers from the first game, DeWitt re-emerges from a portal represented by his office door.

Similarities and differences to the first BioShock seem to trade blows early on, audio diaries are still scattered around the game, fleshing out story and environment detail. The diaries are not as novel as when BioShock first introduced them in 2007, but are still essential listening. Looting bins and cupboards is still prevalent, though somewhat anachronistic in a bustling, still very much functioning city.

However, one of the more noticeable changes is in traversal. Rapture was a decaying, claustrophobic city linked by tight corridors and crumbling halls. Columbia's sky-city is far more open, offering a verticality Rapture never could. DeWitt is a buoyant, athletic fellow, who can move quickly and use his skyhook to grapple onto gantries around the city. Useful for getting around, and handy in combat as an escape route or vantage point. The overall impression is a far more kinetic game than BioShock, but one that isn't afraid to slow down and let you drink in its atmosphere.

That atmosphere is one of contrast, between the have and the have-nots of Columbia. While the façade is one of a happy, affluent city, once you journey into its dark heart you find the rumblings of a civil war. Rebel progressionists beginning to fight back against the oppression of Columbia's regime. We don't get to meet Elizabeth this time around, but she will join you as your emotional motivation and combat partner. Quite how her mysterious brand of magic and environment manipulation will fit into Infinite's already dynamic combat remains a pertinent question.

It's not the only one. The most compelling thing about Infinite's extraordinary opening hour is how it tells you so much --about Columbia and DeWitt, in particular-- while simultaneously raising one quandary after another. Just who is Father Comstock? What are those letters scrawled on DeWitt's hand? Why are they after Elizabeth? What's with the flashbacks to DeWitt's office in 1893? Irrational take obvious delight in toying with its audience, and the richness of its world and compelling draw of the questions they ask means that finding out the answers will be nothing less than essential.